The Listening Academy was held in Singapore in August 2023, bringing together a diverse range of practitioners to explore questions of loss, and in what ways listening contributes to attending to bodily vitality and healing. The attached document brings together reflections from the Academy's main facilitators, who speak about their practices and approaches.
Contributions from Listening Academy Singapore 2023: Loss Attunement co-convenors Alecia Neo and Jill J. Tan, and workshop facilitators Jevon Chandra, Li-chuan Chong, Kristina Mah, Yifan Wang, and Beverly Yuen, with Brandon LaBelle.
DOWNLOAD REFLECTIONS HERE
Listening Circle Attendees:
Alecia Neo, Jill J. Tan, Li-chuan Chong, Jevon Chandra, Kristina Mah, Yifan Wang, Chong Gua Khee, Dapheny Chen, Shirley Soh, Nurul Rashid, Fang-Tze Hsu, Pat Toh, Hasyimah Harith, Horhaizad Adam, Bernice Lee, Chan Lishan, Brandon LaBelle.
DOWNLOAD REFLECTIONS HERE
Listening Circle Attendees:
Alecia Neo, Jill J. Tan, Li-chuan Chong, Jevon Chandra, Kristina Mah, Yifan Wang, Chong Gua Khee, Dapheny Chen, Shirley Soh, Nurul Rashid, Fang-Tze Hsu, Pat Toh, Hasyimah Harith, Horhaizad Adam, Bernice Lee, Chan Lishan, Brandon LaBelle.
9 Aug – 12 Aug 2023, Singapore
Dance Nucleus and other locations
Studio Address: Dance Nucleus, Goodman Arts Centre
90 Goodman Rd, Block M #02-53, Singapore 439053 (No lift access)
Studio Address: Dance Nucleus, Goodman Arts Centre
90 Goodman Rd, Block M #02-53, Singapore 439053 (No lift access)
The Listening Academy is an independent research academy focusing on listening as a philosophical, artistic, social and somatic issue. This entails a relation to sonic, performative and ecological practices, sound studies research, and experimental pedagogy. The Academy offers a generative and nurturing framework for researchers and practitioners to engage in collaborative exchange and the sharing of knowledge, as well as workshopping new directions in sound studies and related issues and practices. This includes bringing together individual approaches and work, and creating opportunities for material exploration and building new collaborations.
For the Listening Academy’s 2023 iteration in Singapore, we explore losses: known, unknown, anticipated and historically sedimented, and the seen and unseen. Through a series of workshops, we attend to concepts such as the acousmatic (Chong Li-Chuan), aphantasia (Jevon Chandra), and the unsayable (Jill J. Tan and Alecia Neo), through methods which include sound walks, embodied rituals, and contemplative inquiry (Kristina Mah). Across programs, we seek to move beyond normative hearing, seeing, and sensing. We ask: What is knowing, feeling, making, hearing in process? How do we come to knowledge through/ of silence? How do we engage in processes of attuning to the environment, unclotting coagulated wounds, and healing without teleological expectations?
Participants may propose workshops, talks and relevant activities during the course of The Listening Academy.
MY Workshop
Creative Research Through Contemplative Enquiry (120 minutes)
We are witnessing a shift toward embodied philosophies and practices that value holistic integration of mind and body. The care for self and other is becoming crucial to how to live and work. To that end, developing ways of cultivating an attunement and somatic sensitivity to self and others can support creative practitioners by unveiling deeper and richer understandings of their lived experience that can inform research and practice.
This workshop proposes a framework for creative research through contemplative enquiry. The contemplative framework consists of the preparatory stages of stabilising attention and observing the mind and uses somatic snapshots to sample key moments of experience. Somatic snapshots are mental scans and imprints that sweep attention through the body, noticing affective, attentional, cognitive and proprioceptive dimensions of experience at key points during an embodied practice.
During the workshop participants will experience a set of contemplative practices that explore lived experience by observing the influence of the body, attention and awareness while framing an embodied practice. They will be asked to journal the experience through writing, body mapping and movement. Afterwards, participants will split into groups to discuss their experience of the practice, using their journals to guide the discussion. They will recall and reflect upon sensations, thoughts and feelings.
PROGRAM
All sessions are held at Dance Nucleus Studio, unless stated otherwise.
Wed, 9 Aug
Dance Nucleus Studio Available: 4.30 pm till late
5.00 pm – 8.00 pm: Chong Li-Chuan
We Are Going On A Soundwalk
Lecture Performance (60 minutes), Soundwalk (60 minutes), Debrief & Dinner (60 minutes)
8.30 pm – 10.00 pm: Brandon LaBelle
Presentation and Open reflection on the concepts of acoustic care and acoustic justice (60 minutes) with the screening of video Deaf Script (Brandon LaBelle / Octavio Camargo), 2022, 12:00 min.
Thu, 10 Aug
Dance Nucleus Studio Available: 9.00 am – 7.30 pm
11.00 am – 1.00 pm Participant Workshop: Offered by Beverly Yuen
Resonating Echoes: Unlocking the Art of Listening (90min workshop, 30 min debrief)
3.00pm – 5.00pm Kristina Mah
Creative Research Through Contemplative Enquiry Workshop (120 minutes)
5.15 pm – 7.15 pm Participant Workshop: Offered by Yifan Wang
Solar Listening (Intro: 15 mins; DIY Workshop: 60 mins; Collective Discussion: 45 mins) Max. participants: 8, observers allowed.
Fri, 11 Aug
Dance Nucleus Studio Available: 10.00 am – 4.00 pm
1.00pm – 4.00pm: Jill J. Tan and Alecia Neo
Unclotting Sensing; Embodying Sedimented Histories of Death Workshop (180 minutes)
Sat, 12 Aug
4.00 pm – 5.30 pm: Jevon Chandra
Tour and chill @ National Gallery Singapore
Meeting point: Calm Room Level B1 of the City Hall Wing, in the Spine Hall. Feel free to approach any of our Front-Of-House staff if you need assistance in finding the room.
Visiting of Calm Room residency and Hutan art installation by LittleCr3atures® x Jevon Chandra x Lynette Quek
Dance Nucleus Studio Available: 6.30 pm till late
7.00 pm – 9.00 pm: Jevon Chandra
Ways of Not Seeing [max 15 participants, observers permitted]
Workshop (90 minutes), Sharing (30 minutes)
9.00 pm till late: Closing Reflections & Open Studio
Participants are welcome to bring reflections, artworks, artefacts, traces from their research and practices to the studio to share and be in conversation with others.
https://listeningbiennial.net/